Review: ‘New World Order’

At a Ground Zero anniversary memorial, conspiracy theorists argue 9/11 was "an inside job," while at Chantilly, Va., they monitor arrivals of the super-rich members of the hush-hush Bilderberg group. Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel's "New World Order" is less about an international cabal seeking world enslavement than about those who fervently believe such conspiracies exist.

At a Ground Zero anniversary memorial, conspiracy theorists argue 9/11 was “an inside job,” while at Chantilly, Va., they monitor arrivals of the super-rich members of the hush-hush Bilderberg group. Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel’s “New World Order” is less about an international cabal seeking world enslavement than about those who fervently believe such conspiracies exist and who crusade to defeat them. As in their previous docu “Darkon,” about medieval game-players, the filmmakers here neither validate nor ridicule their subjects. Opening May 22 at Gotham’s Cinema Village prior to an IFC airing, the docu’s very sanity may limit its appeal.

Austin radio host-cum-video pamphleteer Alex Jones is the group’s most successfully self-promotional. Jones theatricalizes his paranoid fantasies for any camera or mic in sight, while retired cop-turned-militiaman Jack McLamb covertly dwells with like-minded Christians on an Idaho mountaintop, and twentysomething Brooklynite Luke Rudowski quietly dedicates each spare moment to awakening others to their imminent imperilment. Stressing extremist scenarios, proselytizers exclude partial meetings of the minds. Some minds, of course, are already shut down — witness Geraldo Rivera’s scathing contempt when the demonstrators interrupt his Times Square broadcast about underclad coeds.